I will discuss the acquisition of “labels” for data items when the labeling is imperfect. Labels are values provided by humans for specified variables on data items, such as “PG-13″ for “Adult Content Rating on this Web Page.” With the increasing popularity of micro-outsourcing systems, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, it often is possible to obtain less-than-expert labeling at low cost. I will present strategies of managing quality in a crowdsourcing environment, showing in parallel how to integrate data acquisition with the process of learning machine learning models. I illustrate the results using real-life applications from on-line advertising: leveraging Mechanical Turk to help classify web pages as being objectionable to advertisers. Time permitting, I will also discuss our latest results showing that mice and Mechanical Turk workers are not that different after all.

Evgeny Morozov and Andrew McLaughlin will debate the sincerity, utility and repercussions of America’s commitment to a free Internet. They will discuss the desireability of network neutrality and network regulation in the context of US foreign policy, the ways to balance user privacy with the growing needs of law enforcement agencies; and the emerging threats to freedom of expression that are inherent in the technical design as well as the business imperatives of today’s Web.

Where is the line drawn between fair and effective enforcement of intellectual property rights and so-called “bullying”? Stories of pugnacious patent-holding companies, combative copyright trolls, and threatening trademark enforcers abound in the news recently. Our panelists will discuss the significance of IP bullying (or lack thereof), the effect of the evolution of the IP litigation model on competition, and how rights holders can walk that fine line between effective policing and bullying.

The goal of Music Hack Day is to explore and build the next generation of music applications. It’s a full weekend of hacking in which participants will conceptualize, create and present their projects. Music + software + hardware + art + the web. Anything goes as long as it’s music related.

Digital technologies are rapidly encroaching on skills that used to belong to humans alone. This phenomenon is both broad and deep, and has profound economic implications. Many of these implications are positive; digital innovation increases productivity, reduces prices sometimes to zero, and grows the overall economic pie. But digital innovation has also changed how the economic pie is distributed, and here the news is not good for the median worker. As technology races ahead, it can leave many people behind. Workers whose skills have been mastered by computers have less to offer the job market, and see their wages and prospects shrink. Entrepreneurial business models, new organizational structures and different institutions are needed to ensure that the average worker is not left behind by cutting-edge machines. McAfee brings together a range of statistics, examples, and arguments to show that technological progress is accelerating, and that this trend has deep consequences for skills, wages, and jobs. He makes the case that employment prospects are grim for many today not because there’s been technology has stagnated, but instead because we humans and our organizations aren’t keeping up.